Sedo announced a new auction option this morning called “Last Chance Auctions”.

The more I learn about it, the more I like the idea.

Last Chance Auctions allow Sedo users to start a domain auction at a reserve of 99 USD/GBP/EUR. This is a good way for customers to get added exposure for domains they perhaps want to cull out of their portfolio.

Currently, you must be a SedoPro customer to list domains in Last Chance Auctions. The submission process is manual.

I think Sedo made a great call in how this works in practice. There’s no “last call” section on the company’s web site. Instead, the auctions are part of the regular marketplace auctions listings. This gives exposure to the domains without calling out that their owners consider it a closeout.

This should make the marketplace auctions section of Sedo’s site more lively. But quality control will be key.

Just a note to sellers — there’s still the standard minimum commission of 50 USD/GBP/EUR.

If you tried to reach most of Oversee.net’s web sites this morning — Oversee.net, Snapnames, or Moniker — you probably ran into difficulty.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the company, which was scheduled to run a live domain name auction from Barcelona this morning U.S. time.

The company has officially announced that the auction will be postponed, but the new date hasn’t been set.

This isn’t the first time technical problems have derailed a domain name auction. I think every major domain name auction company has run into tech problems along the way, forcing either a postponement or challenges getting online bidders in on the action.

Whitney’s auction has a number of good deals that are (currently) priced very nicely. And 29 of the 30 domains have already met their reserve. There are a lot of good product names on the list.

Many of the domains would be better as plurals, but are still good domains for development. For example: baseballscore.com, hockeyticket.com, basketballscore.com, athleticshoe.com. All of these domains are currently $510 or less.

Some other domains in the auction that are currently at very attractive prices:

TRAFFIC is out, but auction house still plans to auction domain names.

After TRAFFIC organizers said they wouldn’t let a collection of domains previously registered to John Zuccarini be auctioned at their show, Rick Latona‘s auction house has decided to auction the domains on its own, according to a court filing.

The domains are part of a cybersquatting judgment originally won by Office Depot but later transferred to DS Holdings.

The receiver in the case planned to auction the domain names at next month’s TRAFFIC auction run by Latona. But Zuccarini pointed out that TRAFFIC co-founder Howard Neu had once represented him in the lawsuit that led to the domain names being seized and cried foul.

TRAFFIC organizers then said they wanted nothing to do with the domain names. According to the plaintiff’s attorney:

With his multiple threats, Judgment Debtor John Zuccarini has scared Howard Neu and the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference from getting involved in the auction of the domain holdings.

So the receiver amended his plans to drop the TRAFFIC show but still use Latona’s auction house to auction the domain names. The court has just approved this plan.

But this may not be the end of it. Zuccarini continues to warn Latona that he may be sued if he moves forward with the auction. Zuccarini still argues that the domain names were wrongfully seized from him as he says there was no court order to transfer the domains. He just responded to an argument from VeriSign in an ongoing lawsuit claiming the same (pdf).

What’s interesting to me is the sudden urgency of the judgment holder and receiver to auction the domain names. The domains are earning parking revenue, so they aren’t dead weight. (Although the receiver has some big headaches since he forgot to renew some of the domains). In justifying auctioning the domains in October, the receiver argued that TRAFFIC would be the best venue to sell the domains over the next two years. With TRAFFIC out, the plaintiff now is willing to do an auction without the TRAFFIC umbrella. The plaintiff is arguing to the court that Zuccarini will do whatever he can to stall an auction. But it’s still a mystery why there’s a sudden push to auction the domains.

First, chill out. I’ve seen a bunch of comments today from people that now assume everyone who ever beat them in an auction is a fake bidder or scammer. Look, there are a lot of people out there who bid at the last second, bid in a lot of auctions, and bid to win.

Second, it’s time that we re-examine domain name auctions, be they expired auctions, live auctions, or whatever. A lot of questions have been posed in the past that have never really been addressed. Here are few:

-What are domain auction companies doing to prevent this from happening in the future? A lot of people have questioned shill bidding at expired domain auctions. We’ve had to trust the company that it is playing above board. Now claims of illegitimate bidding will have to be taken seriously. That also goes for non-paying bidders. NameJet has done a lot to clean up issues with non-paying bidders; it almost lost its credibility thanks to the issue.

-Should people who financially benefit from a particular auction be allowed to bid? I’m specifically talking about domain conferences that get a cut of auction proceeds. I see two problems with conference organizers bidding in these auctions: if they bid and don’t win, the winning bidder paid a higher price, of which the organizer gets a cut, and second, if they get a cut on a domain they buy then they got a discount.

-Are all existing live domain auctions even legal? In some states you need to have a licensed auctioneer; in others you need to post bond to hold an auction. There are some loopholes, such as calling an auction a “private” auction, but you know what they say about loopholes.

…One of the biggest ironies in the domain name industry is that Oversee.net doesn’t own Oversee.com.

…There are two types of people in the domain industry: giving people and taking people. There are some great people in the industry who devote time and money to charity. Then there are those that keep their riches to themselves. Thank goodness there are more givers than takers.

…I got back into running recently, and that’s good for business. I do great thinking when I’m jogging.

…Yahoo’s traffic quality score changes are causing bigger waves in the domain industry than expected. Hopefully it’s just short term.

The domain name Rent.co.uk is set to sell on Sedo this Friday for at least £65,000 GBP. That’s about $107,000 USD at today’s exchange rates. So far there’s only one interested buyer in the domain name, which would chart itself well for sales of .co.uk domains.

8q.com will also close on Friday. It has attracted two bidders and a top bid of $10,100.

The most active auction at Sedo right now is for xoxide.com. It has 71 bids and a current price of $7,611. The auction includes the popular web site for computer modification tools. The current owners are shutting it down and putting it up for sale. According to the sales page at Xoxide.com, the site does roughly $200,000 in monthly revenue. The key measure — profits — is not disclosed. The site received over 300,000 unique visits in August. The xoxide.com auction ends September 17.

Here are some other auctions at Sedo this week worth keeping an eye on: